Yesterday evening I purchased a product on Ebuyer and with that I selected "Next Day Deliever, Pre-Noon". Around 10PM I receive an email from Ebuyer confirming that my parcel had been dispatched and that Parcel Force would be delivering it. All good I thought. I couldn't sleep due to the amount of excitement, due to expecting my parcel to arrive in the morning.

As 8AM draws ever closer, I start peering out of the window. 9AM, I start peering out the window a little more. By half 10 this morning, I'm peering out the window a lot more frequently and starting to get a little anxious. 11 AM goes by, still no parcel. 11:45 AM goes by, still no parcel. Noon goes by, STILL NO PARCEL.

By now, I'm ready to lose the head. However, instead of bursting out shouting in my Scottish ways, I first call up parcel force to run my tracking number through their system to see where my parcel actually is. To my dismay I here the words: "Unfortunately due to snowy conditions, we haven't actually received your parcel yet sir. I'm afraid you'll need to call Ebuyer as it's in their hands."

JUST GREAT. Just exactly what I needed to be hearing, after waiting all morning, no-one from Ebuyer had the courtesy to phone me up and say, "Due to the snow, we can't deliver your parcel today."

So I get on the phone to Ebuyer to wait 15 minutes in a queue to be put through to a customer advisor. I asked her, "When can I expect to have my parcel? Because it's not exactly a cheap product I bought." She replies, "We'll try deliver it to you by tomorrow sir, however if the snow does delay it, and you don't receive it by Monday, you can give us a call back and we'll refund you for the delivery charge."

Here's my personal gripe though, why is it, the second someone in our country mentions "snow is coming" everyone panics and goes into a frenzy? "OH WE CAN'T DELIVER GOODS IN HALF AN INCH OF SNOW! THAT'S AGAINST HEALTH AND SAFETY REGS!" Really?

There's companies in Alaska that deliver tankers full of oil in snow blizzards almost 200% worse than here, and yet our country comes to an absolute stand-still over snow that's not even deep!! England has to grow some major cahoonies. The snow isn't going to stop you getting to/coming from work, or the shops, or delivering parcels. Not unless it's 4/5" deep, and it wouldn't be, because most of the main roads are cleared.

Councils don't exactly help matters either, saying they have snow ploughs on stand-by, yeah? WHERE ARE THEY THEN!!? And why aren't they out clearing the snow? I know a couple of my mates from down there had to get a JCB to clear their road and it did a better job than the council.

The simple answer is 'because everything is run on a knife's edge in order to extract the most profit" so any kind of infrequent and hindering factor tends to cause far more problems.The supermarket doesn't have a mini warehouse out back, because that's space that needs renting and that's less profit, so the supermarket gets 2 deliveries per day to keep the shelves stocked. But if something happens to those deliveries and our road network is a series of well placed accidents away from near total gridlock, then the supermarket runs out in a matter of hours. Ditto many other areas of life.Because of insane multinational trade agreements, much of what we produce is exported and much of what we need is imported. It's the same everywhere. It's about tying everyone together in a massive web so complex and interlinked that no one, once enmeshed, can extract themselves.

Also, some parts of the country have had a foot or so of snow. Plenty enough to cause disruption.

The simple answer is 'because everything is run on a knife's edge in order to extract the most profit" so any kind of infrequent and hindering factor tends to cause far more problems.

Surely if that was the case, they would be losing money should any inconvenience come up? Let's think about this, because the old saying goes, "time is money." So should any part of the operations department suddenly come to a grinding hault because of some snow, the company won't be making money, because they aren't making, and distributing goods.

Quote from: salparadise

The supermarket doesn't have a mini warehouse out back, because that's space that needs renting and that's less profit, so the supermarket gets 2 deliveries per day to keep the shelves stocked. But if something happens to those deliveries and our road network is a series of well placed accidents away from near total gridlock, then the supermarket runs out in a matter of hours. Ditto many other areas of life.

Because of insane multinational trade agreements, much of what we produce is exported and much of what we need is imported. It's the same everywhere. It's about tying everyone together in a massive web so complex and interlinked that no one, once enmeshed, can extract themselves.

Yeah, they're running the JIT stock method, and it's the same as what I just said above. Those deliveries are part of the operations department to keep things running. I mean, there was Asda just half an hour ago delivered our shopping that we order on Thursday. We couldn't book Friday because there was no spots, but we could book this morning and they delivered even in the snow.

The snow is about half a foot, but they still delivered. That's what I call service!

Logged

If you try to look through Windows, you can see what the person is doing. If you try to look through a Penguin, it WILL bite you.

Two points. First England are hopeless at clearing snow. As a person who crosses the border on a weekly basis t is with embarassment that I note the complete standstill of traffic in snow conditions from Scotland to England. The Scots are effient the English appalling. As soon as I go through Coldstream roads go from gritted and clear to total Snow trucking roads, we are useless.

Second point. Service I recently bought a camera from Hong Kong for just under half the pricethan from the now defunct Jessops. I ordered it on Monday afternoon and got it on the Friday! It comes with full collect from my house warranty and post was free.

Time for British companies to offer better customer services and be competative or we shall see more HMV, JESSOPS, BLOCKBUSTER happening.

Two points. First England are hopeless at clearing snow. As a person who crosses the border on a weekly basis t is with embarassment that I note the complete standstill of traffic in snow conditions from Scotland to England. The Scots are effient the English appalling. As soon as I go through Coldstream roads go from gritted and clear to total Snow trucking roads, we are useless.

Second point. Service I recently bought a camera from Hong Kong for just under half the pricethan from the now defunct Jessops. I ordered it on Monday afternoon and got it on the Friday! It comes with full collect from my house warranty and post was free.

Time for British companies to offer better customer services and be competative or we shall see more HMV, JESSOPS, BLOCKBUSTER happening.

Yep, us Scots are efficient alright, especially when it comes to snow. Guess it's because we're used to it, haha! As well as the rain.

Secondly, I've noticed that service in the UK is horrible. I've bought a couple of things from Germany/Holland before and I've got them 2 days later. In the UK, you'd wait at least a week!!

Also, did you not incur a import tax charge? i.e. Customs "Quota".

Logged

If you try to look through Windows, you can see what the person is doing. If you try to look through a Penguin, it WILL bite you.

Yep, us Scots are efficient alright, especially when it comes to snow. Guess it's because we're used to it, haha! As well as the rain.

Dare I mention the M8 debacle of 2010 when the motorway between Scotlands 2 biggest cities was brought to a standstill by a "wee bit a sna"

Graeme

In fairness, the snow in 2010 was the worst he had experienced back then, and because the councils ran out of grit, we had to wait for more to be imported. I remember not being able to travel to college because the buses weren't running.

That was havoc.

Logged

If you try to look through Windows, you can see what the person is doing. If you try to look through a Penguin, it WILL bite you.

For various reasons the English drivers probably don't want to go into Scotland if they can help it.

Gone are the days when they could leave the parcel on the floor, then knock on a door in Hadrian's wall and run off

How long till you guys realise .. We English only ever wanted to get stuff OUT of Scotland, not put stuff IN (I can feel a backlash coming from that statement .. but before you start shouting "sasanach" or going all Gaelic on me, note the wink at the end )